The Wind Is Rising 1

by Daniel Steele

  As we walked slowly, looking out onto the river and the occasional yachts powering down the river toward the St. Johns exit into the Atlantic twenty miles away, I found myself worrying over a stray thought that I couldn’t quite pin down. It had been a busy day and my mind was full, but it seemed like there was something I should have remembered. But for the life of me, I couldn’t imagine what it might be.

  “Penny for your thoughts.”

  I looked down and caught her smile. It felt natural and right to be looking down at her. I had spent my entire life looking up at Debbie. I had loved Debbie. It was only two inches and horizontally it made no difference at all. But it was there. I’d even thought once, for a short time, about buying built-up shoes to be on her level.

  But she would have known. And knowing that it made a difference to me, it would have made the height discrepancy even more disturbing than it already was. It would have made me even more pitiful in her eyes than I already felt. I would have felt even less her equal than I always had. Tell me it made no difference. Tell me millions of men had happy marriages with women that towered over them. Tell me love was a matter of what was in your heart, not how tall you measured in your stocking feet.

  Tell me all that shit. I’d told myself the same thing a million times over 20 years. And it never stopped bothering me.

  Now, looking down on the blonde goddess who was just tall enough for me to lean over for a kiss, it felt RIGHT to hold her. I felt like a man should feel with a woman who belonged to him, if only for a few hours.

  And even knowing what I was likely to be doing with her later tonight, that smile warmed me more than even the promise of sex. She was one of those women you look at and in the first instant, you couldn’t make yourself quite believe that she was real. And knowing just how perfect she was in body and face, the hair, the lips, the eyes, she had no right whatsoever to be a NICE person. Women who looked like she did, weren’t nice. They didn’t need to be.

  “Thinking about how much nicer your warm apartment would be than this cold sidewalk, which is getting colder by the minute.”

  “Just about the temperature differential?”

  “Maybe a little bit about what might happen later on tonight at your place.”

  She shook her head in mock dismay.

  “Just another sex-crazed male. And I thought you liked me for my mind.”

  “I love your mind, so round, so firm, and so fully packed. OW!”

  The last came after she slugged me in the shoulder with one small, hard fist.

  “Truce. I don’t want to mix it up with you after seeing what you did to those bruisers at the Rose earlier. I was just teasing.”

  “I won’t hurt you if you tell me what you were really thinking about. You went away for a little while. Your body was here but your mind was somewhere else.”

  We had walked far enough from the Landing to reach a concrete octagon built out into the river. It was a covered pavilion where you could stand out at the farthest point from the shore and see a good distance north and south down the river.

  There were a couple of younger people leaving the pavilion as we walked onto it. Teenagers listening to IPODs walked linked at the hips. At the far end, an elderly couple looked south down past the lit-up Acosta Bridge, the FEC Railroad bridge which was just being lowered into place after being raised for a tall-masted sailing ship and further to the longer span of the Fuller Warren Bridge. The lit-up Christmas bridges were probably the most beautiful view of the city.

  We walked out to the point facing the Riverwalk on the other side of the St. Johns.

  “I was thinking about a lot of things, Myra. Mostly, I guess, about you and me.”

  She gave me a quizzical look.

  “You already know what caught my eye about you. Just a typical male. I lusted after you first and over time I realized that you were smart, and funny, and didn’t act like you knew how beautiful you were. And felt guilty about my fantasies because not only was I married, but I believed those stories about you and Dallas and in addition to being my boss, he’s my friend. Married and cheating on his wife or not, I didn’t feel right to be thinking about you the way I was.”

  “And?”

  “There’s no mystery about why I was fascinated by you. What I don’t understand is why you had any interest whatsoever in me?”

  “Didn’t we already have this discussion once?”

  “No. This isn’t a poor me pity rant. I know that you were interested in me when you found out what was happening with me and Debbie. And maybe I started looking better and I definitely feel more like a man than I did for a long time before my marriage blew up. But, I’m still not on the level of the kind of guys that might – you know- get you hot. The good looking guys.

  “And I always – for a long time – had a sense that you were – curious, intrigued, interested – in me the way a woman is interested in a man. I told myself that it was my imagination, just something I wanted to believe and that it couldn’t be real. Plus, I’m realist enough, and I think I know you well enough, to know, that losing some pounds and looking better, wouldn’t be enough to sweep you off your feet.

  “So, impossible as it seems, I think you must have – somehow – started thinking about me – as a man back when I was fat and sloppy and losing my hair and happily married to another woman. And I don’t understand that.”

  She wet her lips with that incredibly pink tongue. It could have been because the night breeze had dried her lips. Or it could have been because she was trying to drive me crazy.

  “So you’re saying, Mr. Maitland, that women are only curvy men and we couldn’t possibly become interested in a person of the opposite sex because of – their personality, the kind of person they are, their kindness, bravery and sincerity.”

  I looked into those green eyes and despite the serious expression on her face I couldn’t help grinning as I said, “Actually, yeah, I guess that is what I’m saying. That is something only a woman could say.”

  She tried to stifle the smile, but finally gave way to it.

  “Alright, I laid it on a little thick. But women aren’t men.”

  “Thank God.”

  “Yeah. Thank God. But it’s the truth. Women just don’t think like men. About sex or love- attraction – or anything. Most men couldn’t possibly develop feelings for a woman that doesn’t attract them at all sexually. Women do it all the time. Of course great hair and good looks and a great body doesn’t hurt. But women are attracted by other things.”

  “Like flab and a receding hairline and tongue-tied lust?”

  “Like…”

  She turned her back on me and stared out black water, leaning her soft curves against me. I instinctively wrapped my arms around her.

  “I’d seen you in Dallas’ office the first week I was here. And the way you tried to hide your obsession was my boobs was a little creepy, but Dallas said you were VERY married and I could see you trying not to be insultingly obvious. I was used to the way men react, but at least you were making an effort to treat me like a normal woman. And the women in the courthouse were already calling you The Iceman.

  “In the first few months I heard the way people talked about you, the way Dallas talked about you and I saw you in a few trials. I could tell even then that you weren’t your average attorney. You weren’t a 9-to-5er. And I started admiring you for the way you put everything into your job. I didn’t know then that you were destroying your marriage.”

  She leaned back and shivered. I thought it was the cold wind off the river.

  “But you didn’t start to work your way into my head until the Welaka Cannibal trial. I was in the witness section when the jury brought back the guilty verdict. I remember Charlie Case standing behind him when the foreman pronounced him guilty of 11 counts of first degree murder. I remember the Cannibal leaping to his feet with those chains on his hands, screaming. I remember Case grabbing him by the shoulders. He was like a giant spider, quivering, all arms and
legs.

  “Case told me later that he wasn’t really frightened. I don’t think any human being ever has really scared him. But he said it – chilled – him.

  “I remember the Cannibal pointing at you behind the prosecutor’s table. I remember Case holding him, Herring sitting behind his desk, and the whole courtroom frozen. I don’t think the spectators were breathing. And I saw you come out from behind the prosecutor’s table and walk over to where Case was holding the Cannibal. I didn’t think he could break free from Case. But, I heard him promise to tear your heart out. And I saw you say something so low that nobody but Case and the Cannibal could hear. Then you smiled at him and Case grinned. I always wondered what you said to him.

  “I think that’s when you started to get under my skin for real.”

  She twisted in my arms and buried her tongue in my mouth. When she pulled away I told her, “I told him that when he got out, if he lived to be 120 and I was still around, I’d be glad to meet him anywhere. I don’t think he got the humor of it.”

  She raised one hand and ran her fingers along my jaw line.

  “And when I knew I was lost, was the day they brought the verdict back on the Toddler Torture and Murder case about a year later. The jury had brought back the guilty verdict against the foster mother. I watched you when they brought the verdict back. No emotion. And I wondered how anyone with a heart could not be moved.

  “I’d gone back to Dallas’ office and he said he’d tried to reach you on your office phone but you weren’t answering and your secretary wasn’t either. I went down and your office door was open. I could see you looking out your window. You never saw me. You were crying.

  “I went back up and told Dallas you were collecting yourself and you’d be available in a few minutes. I didn’t tell him what I’d seen, but I never forgot it. I couldn’t understand how someone could smile at a threat to tear his heart out, and cry over the murder of a little boy. You intrigued me, Mr. Maitland, and the more I saw of you, the more intrigued I became.”

  I remembered both afternoons, although I had no idea she’d been aware of them.

  “I thought I was going to be okay with the Toddler case. It was a hard one but I held it together until I got back to my office. I had pictures of BJ and Kelly when they were about the Toddler’s age. I was looking at BJ and I thought about what it must have been like for that little boy in the last months and weeks of his life, the pain he’d gone through. He couldn’t have understood what was happening, or why. And I just – lost it.”

  She buried her face against my shoulder.

  “And that, Mr. Maitland, is how you swept me off my feet. By being the kind of man who could taunt insane maniacs, and cry for little boys lost.”

  We started walking the long way back to my Escalade and her condo.

  The elderly man and woman on the other side of the pavilion watched the man and blonde woman walk off the structure and stroll down the sidewalk. With no transition, the old people seemed to shrug and became taller. There was no one watching from the river side to see the gleam of moonlight on metal. As the departing couple moved down the sidewalk, the old woman no longer so old, made a move to follow. The man shook his head no and said something only she could have heard, in lilting Spanish.

  After a moment, the old man and woman turned and left the pavilion walking up the sidewalk in the opposite direction. Moonlight revealed only the shabby, out of style-clothing of a lower middle-class senior citizen couple. There were no glints of metal in the moonlight. After a bit, the woman slipped her hand into the man’s and they walked hand in hand alone through the night without words.

  A teenager sitting in a dark corner of a building just off the sidewalk was busily trying to slip his hand under the blouse and bra of the girl who lay in his arms. If he could only get his hands on a nipple, the night might be fun. The was no sound but something made him raise his gaze to the sidewalk as the old couple passed by.

  Watching them shuffle along was depressing, if not downright disgusting, but the way they held hands was kind of sweet. He nudged his girl and she looked up. It had the effect he’d hoped. She pressed herself against him in all kinds of wonderful ways. Girls were suckers for that kind of crap.

  As he used his hands on the girl he kept watching the old couple. There was – something – something strange about them. Probably too many horror movies seen lately. They were just a couple of old farts.

  The girl didn’t notice because her head was buried against his neck, but the couple stopped for a moment and the old man turned and looked straight into the shadows into the boy’s eyes. The boy stopped breathing for a second. How could he even see or sense the boy and girl in the deep shadows.

  But the old man did. Except those weren’t an old man’s eyes. After a moment the old man turned his attention back to the sidewalk and the couple shuffled off. The boy tried to get back into the mood, but finally he gave it up. Rising to his feet, he pulled the girl up and even though she grumbled he walked with her away from the river, back toward the Landing and lights and people.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN - MYRA’S MESSAGE AND CASSANDRA’S PLEA

  November 12, 2005

  Friday, 11 P.M.

  We made it only as far as the Escalade. I turned on the heat and we sat in the darkness letting the warmth soak into our middle-aged bones. My hands gravitated to Myra’s soft mounds, my fingers sinking into the soft and yielding masses. And I thanked God she was sensitive there as I felt hard nubs in the center of each rise and stiffen. I pinched them and pulled on them and when I could get her blouse up, laid her back against the seat and began to suck and milk them like a greedy infant. She moaned, twisted in her seat and fed them to me one at a time.

  We hadn’t said one word since entering the Cadillac. But words were supremely unnecessary. If I’d had any, I would have lost the power of speech as her mouth dropped to swallow my hardness, rising and falling, sucking and slurping and gently nibbling.

  I would have said that I’m one of those men who tends to have a harder time climaxing through oral ministrations rather than old fashioned sex. But tonight it didn’t seem to matter. In a few minutes I was leaning my head back against my seat and holding her head steady in my hands, although she needed no encouragement. Before I even knew it was coming, I was exploding into her mouth and throat so hard my head swam.

  She lay her head against her seat next to mine.

  “You spoiled the surprise I had planned for you back at my place. Kind of anticlimactic now.”

  “If you were planning to do that again, you’d have to give me an IV. I don’t know how I’ve got anything coming out but dust.”

  “I have vodka and rum and Bloody Mary Mix. Something might put a little blush back into your cheeks.”

  “I take it you’re determined to get me to your den of iniquity and to have your way with me?”

  “That’s my plan.”

  We were pulling through the guard gates at her condos in a half hour. When we got up to her unit, we got tangled up on her couch as soon as we made it inside. I didn’t deliberately try to do it, but in the process clothes came off and I realized she was as messy a bleeder as she’d warned me. With an embarrassed expression on her face, she vanished into a bathroom. Ten minutes later she stuck her head out.

  “I’m sorry Bill. This was a bad idea. I hoped we could cuddle and spend the night, but that’s not going to happen. One of us is going to get carried away and I’ll have a mess. Would you be terribly offended if I threw you out.”

  “No, we had a really good night. To be honest, I was thinking I’d like to see Anderson tonight if I had time.”

  “You’re not going over there to see his groupies?”

  “I don’t think even industrial-sized quantities of Viagra would do me much good at this point.”

  “Well, would you stay here until I get cleaned up and then I’ll let you out and lock up behind you.”

  While I heard the roar of the shower through the so
und-proofed bathroom door, I wandered around her condo examining what she had in her fridge – mostly diet foods, vitamin supplements, protein shakes. There were almost no photographs in the place. There was only one of her with an older light browned haired woman with an obvious family resemblance, including very healthy breasts. That had to be the sister she had fled to. Another group shot showed Myra, the older woman, and a guy in a Navy uniform. Her sister and brother-in-law. And a final group shot of Myra, the sister, and a raven-haired shapely younger woman. Maybe not Myra’s equal, but big boobs obviously ran in the family and between Myra and what had to be her niece, there was a striking family resemblance.

  As I inspected the photos, the phone of the kitchen wall rang three times and then I heard:

  “Myra, babe. I’m going to be in England working on that buy-out though next week end but I’ll be back in New York by the 20th. I’ll send you the tickets and I’ll meet you at JFK. We will be in Monte Carlo by the 21st and I’ll be making you scream in the most expensive suite in the Hotel De Paris at the Place De Casino by the evening of the 21st. You remember the one I’m talking about. I can’t wait to be with you and I hope you’re just as hungry for me. This is going to be a fantastic Thanksgiving. And what I’m most thankful for is that I have you.”

  I stood there staring at the phone, the red message light blinking. Why did I feel like I was on an elevator plunging down a 100-story fall with no end in sight. The bottom had fallen out of my stomach. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the phone. My thoughts swirled. When I moved it was like I was sleepwalking. I moved, but I didn’t know what I was going to do until I did it.